Eggblogg

Interesting stuff I've read lately ...

Another great video from Common Craft, this time explaining all about phishing, in plain English. Fantastic.

Meanwhile, at e-consultancy the subject of what's the best screen resolution for your website has come up. I recently had this conversation with a client after we found that the old idea of designing for 800 x 600 was out of date, and that in fact very few people are still viewing at this resolution.

Over at the Search Engine Guide, Paul Jahn ponders how Twitter can be used for customer service. Funnily enough I've noticed how companies are tracking name checks in Twitter posts. When I recently moaned about how Lastminute.com had been a pain to deal with, suddenly @lastminute was following me. They haven't offered me a free weekend in Talinn yet though.

Part of the problem of brands using Twitter is having the 'broadcast' mentality. In a guest post on Chris Brogan's blog, Keith Burtis explores the alternatives to 'blurting' on Twitter, and if you're going to self-promote how to do it in an appropriate way.

And finally .... John Taylor spotted this example of the perfect ad where context is all. Simple but great, brimming with the 'I wish I'd thought of that!' factor.

@stephenfry on Twitter

Yesterday afternoon something on Twitter caught my eye - a comment from someone that 'Stephen Fry is now following you' was an email that would be going on his Facebook wall. Stephen Fry on Twitter? Naturally I had a look, and there indeed he was, fresh on Twitter just a day or so previously, but with over 700 followers already. This morning there are now 2,700. Nick Broom (@nickbroom) wondered if this was a record.

It does appear to be the real SF, judging by the tweets and the link from his website. Although of course Twitter plays host to plenty of bots, scammers and wannabes purporting to be some prominent person or other. I've read some hilarious Tweets from someone claiming to be Bill Clinton, and whether it's him or not I'm not too bothered.

So ... the power of word of mouth, or is there some other cute phrase - word of tweet? Plus I got that same email when SF followed me back - result!

Questioning the value of link building services in a Web 2.0 world

"Dear Webmaster, I have been browsing and came across your great website!"

Aren't you sick of these automated link requests? They always start the same way, and frankly as soon as I see 'Dear Webmaster' I know I don't need to read any more. Just when I thought we had moved on, there seem to have been a plague of these spammy emails lately. Presumably there are legitimate businesses who actually subscribe to these 'link building services'.

Although link building remains part of most SEO strategies, reciprocal linking has long since lost its value. And if the sites linking to yours are either irrelevant, insignificant in terms of traffic, or both ... again, not worth it.

As Chris Baggott notes in his blog, link credibility is what counts with the search engines, not volumes of spammy links.

And yet clearly the message hasn't reached everyone yet. You only have to search on Google for 'link building services' to see that it's big business.

So for a small business wanting to enhance its link credibility, what to do? Writing articles which contain links to your site, then getting them placed on well-trafficked sites, is a tried-and-tested route. Link building through article writing and placement is something I've done for clients in the past, but it's a strategy I'm currently reviewing.

The downside is that everyone is doing it now and there are fewer openings. The larger, content-hungry sites have either contracted one of the large web content providers or have in-house staff to write it. Writing bespoke material and trying to get it placed, one article at a time, is very hard work. The alternative is to place your articles on aggregator sites like Ezine Articles, but then if the pieces are syndicated out to other sites that means Google sees them as duplicate pages and the value of the links is diminished.

There's no quick fix, and I would not recommend the 'Dear Webmaster' route - apart from anything, it seems so 20th century, so unnatural, so not what the web's about.

I suppose the moral of the tale is to keep an eye on your link building strategies to make sure they are actually adding value and not the opposite. And of course, don't neglect all the other aspects of SEO, from targeting the right keywords to keeping your site content fresh, blogging and embracing all that Web 2.0 stands for.

Why CVs should include a person's 'online history'

Like all business owners I'm sure, from time to time I tend to get people writing to me on spec looking for work. These approaches rarely impress, the most common mistakes being:

1) failing to find out my name ('Dear Sir/Madam' - grrr!)
2) failing to visit the website or find out what the business actually does
3) spelling and/or grammatical errors

And then there are the CVs. What do they actually tell you? If you're recruiting people for online marketing, particularly in the sphere of social media, aren't we more interested in a person's internet intelligence - how they use it, what they've done with it, what networks they're active in ... in other words, don't we need a new sort of a CV to tell us this?

I'm not sure what to call it - an 'online history' maybe? These are the things I am interested to know about a potential job applicant:

- How often do you access the internet, and how (at work, at home, from a phone, etc)
- At what age did you first: use email, use a search engine, join an online community or register at a website
- Three most indispensible websites you visit, and why
- Favourite web applications
- Online networks you engage with, numbers of Twitter followers/LinkedIn contacts or even friends on Facebook, any blogs you write or contribute to
- Have you ever built a webpage/started a blog/posted at a review site/created a profile page anywhere/uploaded photos, videos or music to media sharing sites
- What do you read online ... etcetera. Maybe a proficiency test would be appropriate - with questions about search strategies and making value judgements about information found online. 

This kind of profile would say so much more about a person's level of internet confidence and engagement, and the breadth of their experience. These are crucial factors if they're going to spend all day on working online and enjoy it.

As it is, all we get on CVs is 'proficient with Word, Excel and Photoshop'. Never mind the tools, let's hear what you do with them.

Recently I received an speculative email which was articulate, struck just the right tone and didn't make any of the 3 mistakes listed above. He offered to send his CV. I almost said 'don't bother' because I could tell everything I needed to know from his email, without knowing what GSCEs he'd got or where he'd done his bar work as a student. Most 21-yr olds struggle to fill a traditional CV anyway. But his online history .. now that would have been interesting.

Google Chrome - shiny new browser

I like the name - a bit sexy, a bit retro.

There's been a bit of a buzz on Twitter and around the blogs as Google launched its new browser, Google Chrome, this week (Beta). I admit I've installed it, out of curiosity, albeit onto the virtual Windows machine on my Mac (no Google Chrome for Mac OS yet, one definite downside.)

I haven't spent much time on it yet but I agree with Dave Chaffey that the combined search box/address bar is great, doing away with the need for the Google Toolbar and throwing up search results, recently visited pages and helpful keywords. Having recently visited pages displayed graphically whenever you open a new tab is also quite useful. According what I understood from the Google Chrome comicbook  it looks like if one tab crashes or fails to load, it doesn't mean the whole browser crashes, which sounds good (although personally I don't experience that very often).

Elsewhere, folks have commented on its speed, although there are detractors who say better to wait until the technology is more stable (both sides of the argument are currently raging at e-consultancy).

Interestingly, Elaine Fogel at MarketingProfs noticed that her email marketing provider's site didn't recognise Google Chrome. So I tried to do the same and found the same problem - the secure login page wouldn't even load. So a bit of a bummer for those of us who spend a lot of time at those sites.